Characterization of the pathological and biochemical markers that correlate to the clinical features of autism

The goal of this research is to identify morphological markers of deregulation of neuronal metabolism in autism, with a special emphasis on early a) expression of markers of oxidative stress, b) enhanced amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing and abnormal Aβ accumulation in neurons, c) deposition of excessive amount of products of distorted cell metabolism in lipofuscin, and d) activation of inflammatory response to neuronal damage and to detect patterns of pathological changes in the brain. The brains of autistic subjects and control subjects are obtained from the postmortem tissue bank from the Autism Tissue Program.